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Can Pubes Save American Apparel From Bankruptcy? The Hipster Retailer Backs Away From More Conservative Advertising

Tuesday, 26 July 2011

Remember when it seemed like American Apparel was toning down their notoriously porn-y ads?There was that ad that featured Dov Charney working on his laptop in bed flanked by his creative directors. Then there were those illustrated ads, that showed frontal nudity and pubes galore, but the girls were, you know, CARTOONS. We figured that was as far as American Apparel would go when it came to showing pubic hair. We were wrong!Here, in an ad in Purple Magazine (go figure), unearthed by Copyranter, American Apparel advertises their sheer undies on a young model with her pubic hair prominently showing. Not that there’s anything wrong with not waxing it all off like it’s become de rigeur to do, of course, and really why is it that pubic hair makes everything so much more taboo? We checked in with Jessica Grose, managing editor of Slate’s women’s blog, Double X for her quick take on this.“Pubic hair is thought of as gross and undesirable now,” says Grose, “It used to just be titillating but now it is thought of as icky, or at least untamed, so it signifies something unruly, slightly gross and out of control…it’s a provocative ad.”Copyranter questions whether it’s American Apparel’s sleaziest ad ever.What do you think?This seems to be part of a trend for American Apparel in returning to it’s more provocative roots. Other recent ads to have surfaced show a model climbing a tree with just a shirt on (no pants, no panties, natch), and another shows a topless model casually painting her nails in a room full of naked mannequins.